Development of a Walking Promotion Device using Arm Swing Induced by Parametric Excitation

This research proposes the walking promotion device using arm swing induced by parametric excitation. Generally, the walking is promoted by amplification of arm swing. The proposed device is wearable on wrist such a watch. It consists of weight, link and motor. Moving the weight in the longitudinal direction of the forearm, it occurs parametric excitation. In order to design the link length and weight, the arm and device are modeled and simulated with their parameters. In the result, the weight of the device is set to 0.10kg, the link length of it is set to 0.02 m, and the target amplification angle is decided 1°. To perform a preliminary evaluation experiment, 2-links pendulum was made with following the simulation conditions. Comparing with the states of disabled and enabled the device, the shoulder angle increased 2.23° in average. In addition, an evaluation experiment with human arm was conducted. As the results, the device can increase the arm swing.